Gas Line Explosion Kills Five Children
by SuchSmallHands
Summary: The death of five children leaves Lily Potter contemplating the nature of the war and her place in it.


Gas Line Explosion Kills Five Children Outside St. Agnes Primary School

Lily's hands were shaking, but she didn't notice until they brushed together in her lap. The sensation of them trembling against one another called her attention, and she looked absently down. She tried to make them still and was strangely astonished when they didn't obey.

The hospital waiting room around her was not a place where people took notice of a nineteen-year-old girl sitting shell-shocked and alone. It was a place full of mothers and husbands and children trying desperately to find out if their loved ones were fine or injured or maybe not waking up. Everyone's hands shook here.

She was alright, the Healers had said. Several very nasty hexes and a lot of blood loss. A faint scar between her left hip and her rib cage and a potion to take three times a day and don't engage in strenuous activities for a week or two, hm? You're a very lucky girl, Miss Evans; good job those Hit Wizards showed up when they did. Just run down to the Tea Room and wait for those friends of yours to finish filing all that paperwork. What a nasty business, eh?

Mass murder in broad daylight was a nasty business, Lily supposed. Muggles dying, people screaming, spells flying back and forth. A Muggle street, and no other wizards in sight—had she hesitated long enough for it to matter, really? Surely the curse would have reached its target whether she'd leapt forward faster or not. Her hands stayed almost still if she twisted them tightly into the fabric of her skirt.

"Evans," growled a voice. She looked up and saw Mad-Eye Moody looming above her. When she simply blinked at him, he said, "Get up, girl! We're leaving before those damn bureaucrats find another form for me to burn."

He strode into the adjoining travel chamber without waiting for an answer, and Lily stood up and followed. She noticed when she began to walk that the rest of her was shaking too; her feet moved jerkily and the light seemed too bright for her eyes. Parts of her body didn't seem to be connected quite right. She felt like a badly made puppet.

It took her a moment—several moments—to realize that the person standing beside her was doing so on purpose. Gideon Prewett.

"Hello," he said quietly. "The Healers fixed you up?"

"Did they live, any of them?" she asked. To speak felt jarring.

Gideon lowered his head and sighed, so of course Lily knew the answer before he spoke. "We did our best, Lily, but they were too far gone. Kids that size…" He paused. "I'm sorry." Another pause. "At least you tried."

He would have appreciated a response, Lily knew, but at the moment she had no energy left over from forcing air around the choking mound in her throat. In and out…

"Evans! In the Floo!"

"Goodbye, Lily. Take care. I've sent a message to James at work; he should get it within the hour," said Gideon. He looked concerned. She managed a nod. Gideon was nice. And he knew better than to ask things like, "Are you alright?"

Moody thrust the prepackaged serving of Floo powder at her. He let her try for a moment to catch the edges of the green envelope between fingers that seemed cold and divorced from her body, then snatched it back with a growling sneer and did it for her. When he tipped the dust into her palm, she threw it quickly into the fire before she could drop it.

She had forgotten how strange Floo travel felt. The harsh compression of Apparation was absent, but today the lost, dizzying sensation of being shunted about by a force not her own was worse. She would have fallen at the end, had someone's chair not been placed by the hearth; as it was, she stumbled into its back, clutching blindly at the wood and earning a startled yelp from the person within it.

"Lily!" Sirius said, spinning around. "Dear Merlin, don't _do_ that." A wave of his wand Vanished the tea her jolt had knocked from his cup. He looked up at her again and squinted. "Are you alright?"

She jumped as the air in the corner popped and filled itself with Moody. His weather-beaten face curled in contempt as he met her eyes—his Auror trainees probably didn't start at funny noises.

"Sit, girl," he snarled.

"What—did someone-- ?" asked Sirius, rising in alarm and looking from one to another.

"No," said Moody. "Evans here was the only one involved, and by sheer dumb luck, she's not dead."

The only one involved. They didn't count, those children. They weren't someone, weren't anyone who mattered at all. She tried to be fair—all human beings cared more about people they knew; they couldn't help that. Would she have really cared herself if she hadn't been there, hadn't seen their faces?

Sirius took her arm and led her to the table, and she sat down mechanically in the chair to which he steered her. He placed his tea in front of her and, after a moment's hesitation, physically curled her still-shaking fingers around the cup. She took a sip and felt her tongue bitten by both the heat and the lack of cream and sugar. She took another sip.

"What happened?" asked Alice Longbottom, coming with a small group into the room.

"Muggle-baiting," said Moody grimly, unhooking his traveling cloak and hanging it up on the rack. He spoke to Alice, a fellow Auror, as an equal. "Six Death Eaters out having a bit of fun with some Muggle schoolkids in broad daylight—and one Order member fool enough to interfere."

"I couldn't leave them there," said Lily hoarsely, without looking up.

"Yes, you damn well could have," snapped Moody. "A teenaged Unspeakable doesn't fight six Death Eaters. You should have called for backup and stayed out of it. That wasn't brave, that was stupid."

"So I should have left them to die?" she asked, meeting his eyes. Even to her, her voice sounded brittle and cracked. She didn't want to cry here. She didn't want to always be the one to cry.

"It's a war, Evans," said Moody harshly. "People die. Hell, those kids died anyway and came damn close to taking you with them. We can't save everyone, and if we spend our resources stupidly, the bastards'll win. You can't balance a gesture towards some baby Muggles against the life of an Order member."

"Muggles!" shrieked Lily, fighting back hysteria. "They're _Muggles_, so they don't matter—or they matter less. They're not _us_, so how can they _not_ matter less? How is our side different from theirs, then? If I walk past and let them kill kindergarteners because I'm _worth_ more than they are, haven't I killed them myself?"

"And then what about the kids who die next year because of the countercurse you never developed in your Ministry lair?" growled Moody, standing over her and glaring. "What about when the Wizengamot's murdered in their beds because we don't have enough people to do the surveillance on them right? What about when your precious boyfriend does something stupid himself and—"

"Shut up, Moody," snapped Sirius from behind her chair. Lily was crying in earnest now; her shoulders convulsed and her breath shook with sobs. She wanted—she didn't know what she wanted. She wanted to go home. She wanted Moody not to be right. She wanted her Mum. She wanted to be able to visit her Mum without the risk of the Death Eaters following and... Oh, God. She wanted to go home. Where was James?

"We're different because we're fighting _back_," said Moody after a silence, not without warmth. "We're not making these things happen; _they_ are—for God's sake, don't let them put that on your soul. But you can't fight every battle. Fight when you can do good. When you can't, save yourself for the people you _can_ help."

A little girl flashed through Lily's mind, with her school skirt and a pink ribbon in her hair. Brown eyes meeting Lily's for a tenth of an instant. A mummy at home being lied to right now. A mummy crying. A life.

She looked up at Moody. "I can't accept that." She swallowed, wiped tears from her face. "I won't accept that."

He looked back at her, his face a carven blank. "Then you'll die. Soon."

"There are things worth dying for."

"Lily. Alastor. That's enough." Professor Dumbledore's voice broke the line of contact between them. When had he come in?

"Albus," grunted Moody, turning away from Lily after a final, penetrating gaze. "We've got word on Fisher. I've got the dossier in the library."

"I would be extremely interested to see it," said Dumbledore gravely as Moody strode out of the room. What Lily realized with numb surprise had become a small crowd began to disperse. She sat still, suddenly so deeply tired that she lacked the energy even to shake. Her eyes were still leaking tears, but she simply felt drained. A headache was starting behind her puffy eyes. Dumbledore stepped towards her and paused a moment before speaking.

"Your actions this afternoon were very courageous, Miss Evans," he said quietly. "I am sorry for the pain they have brought you."

"They died," she whispered. She looked up, searching for solace in the eyes that could once lessen the smart of any adolescent pain. For all their blueness and wisdom, they could not make this evil less. They could not make Moody wrong. But could they perhaps understand?

"But they did not die without the deepest effort of love," he said gently. "And if we have given that effort to any creature Miss Evans, then we have given all we have to give. A moment of love can matter more than we know."

She looked up at him a moment, green eyes big in a pale face.

"Yes," she said. "I suppose it can."


End file.
